Forum:Canonicity
Moved from User talk:Connor Cabal Hi, I was looking around at alphacontrol and I went to the pages for some of the LiS characters (Dr. Smith, Maureen and John ect..) and I don't recall hearing much of that information before in episodes. Is it just me not paying attention or are those articles based off of fan publications? I can't really tell, and if they are fan fiction and not from the episodes i'm not sure if that would be good for the Irwin Allen Wiki. After a while it might get confusing trying to seperate episode facts from fiction. Well, thats just my personal view on the subject what do you think? Thanks — Mary (talk) 16:51, 13 July 2008 (UTC) :Good catch, Mary. At lot of content at AlphaControl.org comes from The Alpha Control Reference Manual, a fan publication. I had a discussion with Willrobinson about this, but I can't find it now. I am strictly for adhering to the episodes as canon. Any noteworthy material from other sources could be mentioned in an Apocrypha section at the end of an article, with it's source clearly stated. This is another thing that I find very important - all of our sources should be posted. It adds to our integrity as a reliable reference. -- Connor Cabal 18:17, 13 July 2008 (UTC) Thanks. When I looked at the character pages it seemed like there was too much information than what was just told in the show. I agree 100% with you about we should only use info from episodes. We don't want to become a fan fiction wiki. If we felt the need for fan fiction we could create an Irwin Allen Fan Fiction Wiki (better name would be nice but thats getting off topic). — Mary (talk) 23:57, 13 July 2008 (UTC) ::I might just butt in here with the remarks about canon. The Alpha Control Reference Manual should be paired with other sources like the excellent Lost in Space Handbook rather than being used on its own. I look at these books with the same view as the 'Extended Universe' of the Star Wars series: unless an episode or official source contradicts their views, then they can be taken as canon, although not in the same authoritative vein as the proper show. Besides, the various characters and groups in the series were hardly given proper 'fleshing-out' apart from the pilot, which doesn't work for Major West anyway... ::I've also taken some information from the Lost in Space Technical Manual and The Irwin Allen Scrapbook -if it wasn't for these I wouldnt have been able to add a lot of my 'background' additions. (Incidentally, given how few copies of both the ACRM and the Handbook were printed, I won't rate your chances in getting one- the last copy I saw was on Amazon for around $120!) -- Klink13 07:10, 17 July 2008 (UTC) :A major difference with Star Wars is that the Expanded Universe material (novels, comics, games) is all prepared and approved by Lucasfilm, an official source. If we wanted to add a detail such as where somebody was born from a book, it would go under an apocrypha heading. We can't put it in the main body of an article because it is fanfic. If there is behind-the-scenes production info, OTOH, it doesn't matter where we get it from, as long as the source is reasonably reliable. -- Connor Cabal 11:43, 17 July 2008 (UTC) Do you mind if I throw my two cents in? One of the things I dislike about the idea of using alot of book info is the fact that the books might be hard to come by like you said Stef. Not everyone is willing to spend $120 dollars on a rare book just so they can edit the wiki. If we stick with episode info, anyone that can watch that show or get online info can edit those pages. I'm not saying we shouldnt exclude books...if we do include book, magazine ect. info it might be in a different section of the article, and then give an external link to a webpage about that book or you could create a wiki article about the book and give a link to that. If you have a book about the making of that show/movie that could deffinatly go into the article itself under "background". Ok that was my two cents I hope it made a little sense :) — Mary (talk) 22:52, 17 July 2008 (UTC) :I think having articles about Lost in Space (Land of the Giants, etc) books is very important to chronicle noteworthy stuff. They should just never be treated as authoritative because they were never intended to be so by the creators of the show. To give an example, I understand Jonathan Harris and Bill Mumy reunited for a tv special, Lost in Space Forever. Bill Mumy wrote a comic series, Voyage to the Bottom of the Soul,, that showed the further adventures of the Robinsons. I don't think these were compatible with each other (I may be wrong), even though they were supposedly produced by authoritative sources. How much moreso should fanfic documents be treated with a grain of salt. : Another related topic I wanted to bring up is merchandise - should we extend the scope of this site to cover, not just books, but toys and games as well? -- Connor Cabal 23:39, 17 July 2008 (UTC) Honestly, in my opinion, I think that adding info on the toys and games would be great! It would take us a long time to get all of those things but it would be kind of fun, and it would give us more things to do in the future. For that to happen we might need to get users who have some of those things who would be willing to give info and take pictures. We could do it without those kinds of users but it would be a little more challenging. What do you think? — Mary (talk) 23:50, 17 July 2008 (UTC) : We are in no danger of running out of things to do for years. I just started a references section for "The Reluctant Stowaway", and I plan to expand it (this was only from the dialogue up to Smith's introduction) and do the same for each LiS article. Each link, in turn, will get it's own page. You get the idea. As for getting people who have the resources to contribute, I'm not worried. "If you build it, they will come." -- Connor Cabal 00:16, 18 July 2008 (UTC) You have a point there... we do have our hands full of stuff to do and I think thats a good thing. Keeps us on our toes so to speak. I do think that articles on merchandise would be kind of fun to do though. I know that your right about people joining, but I have moments when I get worried that people won't hear of the wiki. But then again thats just me and I do have a bad habbit of worring about nothing :DI mean, look at Memory Alpha or Muppet wiki, those two wikis are so popular, I don't see why the Irwin Allen Wiki can't be the same - given time. — Mary (talk) 03:14, 18 July 2008 (UTC)